Last words above the changing signature.
A mystery of love ingrains the metal,
splintering the stained embroidery
of a goldgreen jewelry box.
There is an absence of April hallalise,
an absence of many things we would have sworn
we could not do without,
when we first lowered our visors
and slipped between the jungle’s spreading shadows.
Birds calling backwards their cries of wonder,
fever like a music running the length of our bodies.
I fall through the keyhole of your eye tra-la tra-la!
Wait for me where the hill
becomes a golden shadeless ocean,
where numbers stumble on the blind staircase,
when cleverness is mystery in a word.
In Xhitiidxa. (And Cabeza de Oro
caught swimming with Mayan girls.)
This is also testimony: we will decide
with and in the same confidence of breath,
loyal to one another in ways much clearer
than the troubled wind or the sand in yellow torment.
We will bury the dead with their hair let loose,
their legends fractured into a million days and nights.
And as for their boasts.
Who among us has not torched the wailing temples,
nor come down kneeling
as the horses screamed, hobbled in the marsh.
My eyes saw gold all around me,
the vines hung down such tantalizing fruit,
I only did what others did, I sinned
for the sake of others,
that innocence might be glorified,
that paradise might be raised up
out of a lake of blood.